Writer, Editor, Helper

Is a Comma Needed to Introduce Dialogue?

Q.

Would you add a comma before the quotation marks in the following sentences?

Ellie finally admitted, “They look different from before.”

Kat set the painting on the windowsill, muttering “One more to go.”

It would be more accurate to say “I made it up” than “I exaggerated.”

Mimicking Hector’s level of sass to perfection, Bel said, “Try to keep up.”

Does Your Novel Need a Copyeditor before Submission?

In the writers’ groups where I hang out online, these queries are evergreen:

• How do I know if I need a copyeditor before I submit my work to an agent or editor?
• How do I find a good copyeditor?
• How much does copyediting cost?

The replies and comments are typically so head-spinning in their range and variety that no one could blame writers for being confused. And who can blame a writer for resisting an expense they aren’t convinced is necessary?

“Erg, no kidding?” Interjections in Creative Writing

Not all fictional characters are meant to be smooth-tongued and lyrical in their speech. Rather, just like us, they sometimes mumble or stumble. Giving a character flawed speech is a way to make dialogue more realistic. And this very human kind of talking often involves the use of interjections.

Exclamation Points in Creative Writing

Exclamation points are controversial. Writers can’t be blamed if they’re confused!

Exclamation has always announced straightforward shouting, alarm, surprise, excitement, amazement, disbelief, exasperation, or even just helpless flustering. In the eighteenth century, readers could expect melodrama:

And those were some of her last words! O how my eyes overflow! Don’t wonder to see the paper so blotted! (Samuel Richardson, Pamela, 43)

Exclamation points still serve in all those ways. But somewhere in the last century, the shouty little mark fell out of fashion in literary prose. Editors today frown on excessive exclaiming even in mainstream fiction, outside of books for young children and comic books. Plenty of passages worthy of alarm make do with commas, periods, or nothing:

When to Capitalize after a Colon

I don’t like to dither over style choices. At the beginning of a sentence, it’s routine to start the next word with a capital letter. But when I type a colon within a sentence, I often have to stop and think about how to write the next word: whether to cap it isn’t always obvious.

The Chicago Way

As I not-so-sneakily demonstrated above, Chicago style lowercases the first word after a colon within a sentence, even if the words after the colon are themselves a grammatically complete sentence (see CMOS 6.63):

They even relied on a chronological analogy: just as the Year II had overshadowed 1789, so the October Revolution had eclipsed that of February. [full sentence after the colon]

The watch came with a choice of three bands: stainless steel, plastic, or leather. [sentence fragment after the colon]

As always, there are exceptions.

Commas between Adjectives in Creative Writing

Do you sometimes dither over whether to put a comma between two or more adjectives?

a polished, spherical stone or a polished spherical stone?

a nice, big check or a nice big check?

Although the guidelines for deciding at CMOS 5.91 and CMOS 6.36–37 work well for any kind of writing, there are times when creative writers prefer to ignore them.

Style and Grammar in Promotional Copy

Anyone familiar with the grammar and style rules and guidelines in CMOS knows they come with a lot of qualifiers: normally, in most cases, in running text, in regular prose, depending on the context—I could go on and on. In life, very few rules are meant to cover every situation. The same is true in CMOS.

This is especially so when it comes to writing and editing marketing copy, something more and more authors are doing for themselves. Indie authors often design their own book covers and ads and write their own press releases. A few weeks ago we looked at the liberties we take when writing or editing blurbs. This week we’ll consider more visual types of promotion.

Sure, You Got A’s in English—But Do You Know Where Commas Go?

A few months ago in a conference session, a group of novelists digressed into good-natured complaints about being copyedited. One writer drew a lot of laughs saying, “I mean, I got A’s in English! I know where the freaking commas go!”* Others nodded in recognition and comradery.

I bit my tongue. I really wanted to say—as gently as possible—I’m sorry dear, but you freaking don’t.

When Characters Speak: Formatting Dialogue

In novels and stories and other creative works, words spoken by a character are normally set off from the narrative with quotation marks, and the speaker is identified in the run of text by tags like “she said.” This is not only Chicago style—it’s an old convention that continues to dominate literature today. To help readers keep track of who’s speaking without the constant repetition of tags, it’s also traditional to start a new paragraph when the speaker changes.

Here’s an example from Ji-li Jiang’s memoir, Red Scarf Girl (New York: Harper Trophy, 1997):

Fiction+ for Creative Writers and Their Editors

Although I officially retired from my work at the Chicago Manual in December, I couldn’t say no to an opportunity to continue hanging around the CMOS Online Shop Talk blog when Russell Harper—the new editor—invited me to share a new corner of the blog with him called Fiction+. There we’ll focus on how to cope when Chicago style rules don’t quite seem to fit the creative context of a novel, story, poem, or play.

Russell kicked things off last week with a post on comma splices; today I interview Janet Burroway, author of the classic textbook Writing Fiction, a staple in creative writing classes that has just been issued in a new 10th edition.

If you’re interested in creative writing or editing, be sure to check out Fiction+. You can sign up for alerts if you want to be sure to catch new posts, and I’ll continue to give you a heads-up here.

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Photo: Woman Writing, by August Macke (1887–1914), courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

“Dos and Don’ts”: Just Don’t

I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog!

We’ve all read those bossy directives from advice mongers: “Do rock a ripped T with a bright floral skirt.” “Don’t chew gum during an interview.” “Do practice blending eyeshadow with your brush.” “Don’t yank electrical cords from the wall.” Aside from being either fatuous and trendy or obvious and unhelpful, such lists actually pose some editorial dangers . . .

Continue reading

Photo: Don’t, by Todd Slagter.

Random Advice for Copyeditor Newbies

If you’re new to copyediting, consider these snippets of advice. (Be sure to check with your supervisor if any of them contradict your usual instructions.)

• Don’t query a word or spelling or locution without looking it up. If a writer uses an unfamiliar word or spelling more than once, it’s very possibly intended. It’s easy to paste “eat one’s cake and have it, too” into a search engine and learn that the writer doesn’t have it backward.
• Don’t waste a writer’s time by continually asking for approval. (“Okay? If you don’t like this, I can put it back.”) Rather, indicate your flexibility in the cover letter. On the manuscript, use queries for giving or asking for information.
• Save grief later by e-mailing the author before you make editing decisions that are hard to undo. (“Re romantic/Romantic: do you have a system for capping? Should I meddle?”)
• Don’t track changes that will be invisible or confusing on a black-and-white printout, such as deletions of hyphens.* If the editing is difficult to read, the writer won’t easily see that the results read well.
• Be conservative in editing until you have more experience. You should be ready to explain every mark you put on the page.
• Remember the copyeditor’s creed: First, do no harm.

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*My workaround is to explain in the cover letter that I have edited common compounds silently in accordance with CMOS and Webster’s 11th Collegiate, and that otherwise I track the opening or closing of compounds respectively like this: right_wing or home-townhometown.

Photo by Jamey Boelhower from Pixabay

English Teacher Bullies?

Recently John McIntyre blogged at the Baltimore Sun about “pedagogical malpractice,” inviting readers to submit stories of English teachers run amuck. I read them with mixed feelings of horror and glee. After all, English teachers, not unlike copyeditors, are an easy target. Their job is to teach the rules, and if they sometimes get carried away to the point of inventing a few, why are we surprised?

Sure, as experienced writers, we’ve learned that the rules of English are often just cardboard bullies that blow over in the wind of good prose. But how is a teacher supposed to impart an ease with bending and breaking rules before they’ve pounded the darned things in to begin with?

An elementary school teacher who wrote to the CMOS online Q&A shamed me into understanding this struggle. She had written for help with commas, asking, “Is it necessary to use a comma after words like next, then, after that, last, and finally when they are the beginning of a sentence? I am a lower-school teacher and need to clarify this.” I had replied, “Punctuation is not so simple that you can make a rule that a comma ‘always’ follows a given word or phrase. Commas depend on syntax as well as pacing, tone, and personal preference. . . . Please don’t teach your students punctuation until you understand this.”

Her response was both discouraged and scathing, taking me to task for my smart-assed unhelpfulness. Who, I understood, would teach her kids if she didn’t? Was I volunteering for the job?

From my seat in the ivory tower, it’s easy to forget that teachers have an entirely different slant on things. Rules are the floats young learners cling to while learning to swim. Mind, I won’t excuse a high-school or college teacher-bully who demands that paragraphs consist of exactly five sentences or who ban the use of the word “thing.” The best teachers will figure out how to model flexibility as opposed to laying down the law. But if reducing English grammar and writing to a teachable science results in some overstated rules now and then, maybe we can consider it a valid—and temporary—stage of learning.

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Image courtesy of FreeSVG